


My Little Healer

by InkFire_Scribe



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Gimli has a daughter, Interspecies Relationship(s), Mixed-race Relationship, baby dwarf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 16:48:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10416633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkFire_Scribe/pseuds/InkFire_Scribe
Summary: Gimli's daughter takes after her uncle Oin. Gimli only wishes her mother were there to see how she's grown.





	1. Baby - The Soft White

**Author's Note:**

> This story came out of one of those daydreams that, when you explain it, sounds like a movie instead of a concept. So I had to write it. So said Loki, and we all know she's always right.

It was soft. It was soft and white and she liked it. Her pudgy little hands fumbled with the roll until it came undone, bouncing across the floor. She followed it, her legs getting tangled in the trailing end as she crawled. It wasn't scary. She rolled on it, trying to grab her own feet and take the soft white off, but it followed her, got wrapped around her chest and hands. It tickled. It felt nice against her skin. She giggled, tugging at it as she sat up again. Some of it slipped down over her eyes and she shrieked with delight as it rubbed against her nose. 

Suddenly, huge hands wrapped around her chest, under her arms, and lifted her up high, high into the air. The soft white moved, and she could see again. She could see a bushy reddish beard and dark brown eyes and with a squeal of sudden, delighted recognition, she grabbed her father's thick braids and tried to pull herself closer to him. The rumble of his voice washed over her, his words lost in his beard, muffled in her ears as he pulled the soft white gently away from her. 

When the soft white was all gone, he pulled her close to his body, and she could hear his huge, strong heart thudding inside his ribs. Steady and even, never stopping, never faltering. Strong. Like her daddy. 


	2. Child - Bandaging

"Adad, let me do it!" 

"In a minute, precious." 

"It's not tight enough, Adad. Just let me do it!" 

"How do you plan to tie this one-handed, I'd like to know?" 

"Adad!" Her thin beard bristled with adorable righteous indignation. Her father, trying to hide a smile in his bushy beard, finally released the clean linen he was using to wrap his daughter's bleeding hand. He watched as she grasped the loose end in one hand and started to unwind it, then rebandage the injured hand with a quick twisting motion she had learned from watching the Healers work. 

She got to the end of the bandage, and rather than tying it one-handed, she tucked the frayed end neatly between the prior layers. Then she flexed her hand, an expression of such fierce concentration on her round, childish face that the dwarf had to work not to laugh. Suddenly, she looked up at him, beaming like the midsummer sun, and held up her bandaged hand for his inspection. 

"I did good! Like Nuncle Oin?" She smiled hopefully, and a look of pride crossed her father's face. His Uncle Oin had died before his little angel had been born, but Grandpa Gloin had told her plenty of stories. The dwarrow idolized her dead uncle almost as much as her living father. Gimli smiled and picked her up to give her a hug. 

"Yes, kidhuzel. Like Uncle Oin." He held her. It was easy to imagine her grown and drifting away. He held her more tightly. "You'll be a great Healer one day. The best." 

Her little fingers curled around the shell of his ear and tugged lightly. She was ready for a game. When he didn't respond quickly enough, she wiggled her fingers against the side of his neck, trying to tickle him, though she lacked the finesse to do it well. Her father laughed and retaliated much more skillfully, tickling her sides until she shrieked with laughter.  

When tickling was done, she hid her face under his beard. "I love you, Adad." Then she released him, dropping to the stone floor and rushing off into the other room as she remembered that she had left her stuffed goat unattended on the green rug to "graze."

She didn't hear the words that rose unbidden to her father's lips. "I love you, too, nathith. Very, very much."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul words: 
> 
> Adad - father  
> kidhuzel - literally "gold of gold," a term of endearment  
> dwarrow - child  
> nathith - daughter


	3. Apprentice - Burns

She felt him wince under the salve she spread with gentle fingers, and glanced up into his bearded face. His eyes were framed with a web of lines from squinting into a bright fire day after day, and his reddish hair sported flecks of grey, though his beard was still thick and dark. She felt herself sigh faintly, discomfited by these signs of age in him. Instead, she shifted her attention to his expression, which was just short of being a scowl. 

"You know, this wouldn't happen if you were more careful," she told him severely, and immediately saw his eyes narrow defensively. 

"Careful," he scoffed. "You don't know the meaning of the word, nathith." His voice was gruff, but there was no bite to it. He wanted to appear angry, but he wasn't, and she could tell. Fitting the lid onto her jar of salve, she returned his scowl. 

"It seems I know the meaning of the word better than you do, Adad. I'm not the one with burns across all four fingers, am I?"

"That's hardly my fault!" growled Gimli, watching his daughter wrap his fingers individually in soft cotton so the burns could breathe and heal properly while not depriving him of the use of his hand for the next several days. "That idiot Horan put my hammer too close to the forge." 

"Then you should have noticed it was too hot to handle before you picked it up," retorted the dwarrowdam, now wrapping his palm as well. The burn there was less deep, at least, so that was something. When she finished, ignoring his grumbling, she sighed a little and held his hand between her own. Her hands were smaller than his, and probably always would be. It was part of what made her so good at what she did. Her mentor, a Healer named Tors One-eye, sometimes asked her to thread the suture for him, and more than once had let her do the stitching, since her hands were so quick and steady. 

"Adad," she said quietly, feeling her eyebrows pinch together with concern, "promise me you'll be more careful."  _ You're not as young as you used to be. _ She wouldn't say so, but it was what lurked in her mind as she spoke. Gimli's expression softened as he looked at her. 

"I can't promise anything," he muttered gruffly, "but I'll try. I'm supposed to be working on finer work this next week anyway. Etching." She relaxed a little and smiled. 

"Good. Now, I need to get back to my lessons." She knocked her forehead gently against his and released his hand. "I'll see you for supper, Adad." Collecting her things, she packed them away in her little medicine bag and flashed her father a grin as she turned to leave. The dwarrowdam was young enough that the prospect of learning a trade was still exciting. She would be the best Healer ever. Her father had said so. She wouldn't be the one to prove him wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul words: 
> 
> nathith - daughter  
> Adad - father  
> dwarrowdam - female dwarf


	4. Healer - Not Sick

"Don't you have other things to worry about right now?" Her father fiddled restlessly with the hem of the blanket she'd pulled over his legs, his bloodshot eyes roving from her to the door, as if hoping she would magically change her mind from what she'd said less than five minutes before. 

"Adad, I've told you before, you're more important to me than anything the Healers might want me to do for them, just because I have younger eyes and quicker fingers than they do." The dwarrowdam met her father's gaze and smiled slightly, fixing the last of her braids with a silver bead he had made for her when she came of age. "I won't let you sneak off to the forges again, not while you have that cough." She saw a defiant, almost petulant scowl cross his seamed face, and smiled again. 

"It's just a wee tickle," he muttered grumpily. "Hardly even a cough at all. No reason for you to waste your whole day-" 

"It's not wasting if I'm taking care of my adad," she told him, entertained by his protests. "I know that Amad would have done the same, if she were here. We're both natural healers." She said this with confidence, though she had never met her mother. The scowl on her father's face faded, replaced with a distant look, a sort of longing that she had never truly understood, but guessed at. He missed her mother, she guessed, though she knew little about the woman. Only her name, and how they had met. Stories about their time together were… off-limits. 

"Your mother was a healer, aye, and a great warrior. I only ever beat her score once." 

"Her score?" The dwarrowdam was suddenly and keenly interested in her father's words. Her fingers, which had been occupied with plaiting her beard, now stopped. Gimli nodded, running a hand over his grey-streaked beard. 

"Aye. I passed her score by one, and it put a notch in my axe that took me weeks to mend. The only time I ever managed it, in all our battles together." His eyes were unfocused, seeing something beyond the plain stone walls of their little suite of rooms under the Mountain. The Healer held her breath, watching her father. She didn't want to interrupt, and perhaps lose this chance to learn more of her mother. 

"I suppose she had the advantage," he admitted softly, as though to himself. "She had that blasted bow of hers. Left it here, when she went into the West to join her kin." He looked at the wall, his eyes finally focusing, and his daughter followed his gaze. On a gorgeously carved display stand fastened to the wall, there rested a bow. It was a delicate thing, longer than a dwarven bow and decorated with vines, flowers, and tiny birds so lifelike that she had thought as a dwarrow that they moved about when she wasn't looking. 

"Can I… ask you something? About Amad?" She felt suddenly that if she didn't ask now, then she would never know. She would lose the chance forever. Gimli turned his gaze on her and nodded slowly. She sensed that he regretted not speaking of her mother more often. "Why did she leave us behind?" 

The dwarf winced as though the words cut like knives, and looked away. Immediately, she regretted asking. She hadn't wanted to hurt him. 

"Because it was… too hard for her to stay here, and I couldn't go with her." He was silent for a long minute before he spoke again, and when he did, it was in a soft, sing-song voice. 

"Legolas Greenleaf long under tree  
In joy thou hast lived. Beware of the Sea!   
If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore,   
Thy heart shall then rest in the forest no more." 

Another long pause followed, in which Gimli looked small and lonely in a way his daughter had rarely seen before. "Her heart was stolen from Middle-Earth by the sound of the gulls long before our final battle together. She stayed as long as she could, and when she could bear it no longer, she left you, so I wouldn't be alone. Your amad loved you very much, but she couldn't stay." 

Then, suddenly, he looked up, meeting her gaze and smiling in spite of the sadness in his eyes. "It was the only thing she could have done that would have made life here without her worthwhile. And it was. It was all worthwhile." He reached out a hand to her and, when she grasped it, his calloused fingers curled around hers. "My kidhuzel, my precious gem. You are my one treasure, and I wouldn't trade you for anything in the world. Not even to have your mother back." 

The Healer's eyes stung, and she smiled in spite of the tears that threatened. She knew how much her father loved her mother, and the idea that she was more precious, even than that… it was almost too much for her. Shifting from her stool beside the wall, she sat down on the bed with her father and hugged him tightly, pressing her forehead against his. 

"I love you, too, Adad. More than anything in the world."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Khuzdul words: 
> 
> Adad - father  
> dwarrowdam - female dwarf  
> Amad - mother  
> dwarrow - child  
> kidhuzel - term of endearment, literally "gold of gold" or "most golden"
> 
> Additional note: The poem Gimli quotes here can be found in _The Return of the King._


End file.
